The Belly of the Bow f-2

by K. J. Parker

  ‘Leave that,’ the landlord said, ‘and find the Islander girl and the old foreign git. Message for them from the Bank.’

  The landlord’s boy stared at the messenger for a second or so, then shoved the tray into his father’s hands and set off like a runner in a relay race. He tried the foreigners’ rooms, but they weren’t there so he doubled back and looked in the common room, and then the side parlour.

  ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to come now. There’s a message for you from the Director’s office.’

  Vetriz and Alexius were playing chess; Alexius had the white queen in his hand, holding it in mid-air above the table.

  ‘What do you think she wants?’ Vetriz said.

  ‘You’re asking the wrong person,’ Alexius replied. He put the chess piece back where it had come from. ‘We’ll call it a draw, shall we?’

  ‘We most certainly won’t,’ Vetriz answered sharply. ‘Make sure nobody touches the board,’ she told the landlord’s son. ‘Very important game. Issues of national security at stake. Have you got that?’

  The boy looked at her as if she was mad, very much as he looked at all foreigners, then led the way down the stairs and across the courtyard to the long kitchen, where the messenger was drinking a cup of hot chicken soup he’d managed to blackmail out of the landlord’s wife.

  ‘You’re to go and see the Director immediately,’ he recited, putting the cup down and wiping his mouth. ‘I’ll show you the way.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Vetriz replied. ‘We’ve been there before.’

  ‘I’ll show it you anyway,’ the boy said firmly.

  Vetriz shook her head. ‘No, you won’t,’ she said. ‘You’ll go away and commandeer, or whatever the right word is, a nice clean, comfortable wagon and a couple of well-behaved horses, and,’ she added firmly, ‘some cushions. You can show them your badge or something, I expect you know what to do. Then you can escort us to the Director’s office. Understood?’

  ‘But…’

  Vetriz looked extremely stern. ‘Unless,’ she said, ‘you want to explain to the Director why Patriarch Alexius of Perimadeia died of heart failure trying to keep up with a fifteen-year-old boy running through the Town streets in the dark. I’m sure she’ll understand once she’s heard your side of the story.’

  The boy was back in seventeen minutes, with a small cart and a bewildered-looking drover, who was wearing a horse-blanket over his shirt and stockings. ‘Now can we go?’ the boy asked pitifully. Vetriz nodded.

  ‘Now we can go,’ she replied.

  ‘Thank you,’ Alexius said, as the cart bumped and rattled down Drovers’ Street. ‘I really couldn’t have faced a forced march this evening.’

  Vetriz nodded. ‘Bad headache?’ she said.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Me too.’

  They looked at each other.

  ‘So what did you see?’ Vetriz asked.

  Alexius frowned. ‘It’s hard to explain, really,’ he said. ‘I was sitting in a large building, like a meeting-hall or a chapter house, and it was empty except for my old friend Gannadius – I’ve mentioned him before, haven’t I? Oh, you know him of course, I forgot. Anyway, he was sitting directly in front of me watching something I couldn’t see, and I kept tapping him on the shoulder, but I couldn’t make him look round. It only lasted a few seconds, and I can’t make head or tail of it.’

  Vetriz shrugged. ‘Beats me too,’ she said. ‘And mine was – well, if I didn’t know better I’d say it was more like a daydream – you know, like normal people have? Except for the headache, of course, and that might just be falling asleep with my head at a funny angle. But I don’t think so.’

  ‘What was yours about, then?’

  Vetriz’ nose twitched. ‘Well, it sounds silly, really. A bit – personal, let’s say. It had Bardas Loredan in it, and whoever I was in it, I certainly wasn’t me, if you see what I mean. Pity, really,’ she added.

  Alexius looked grave. ‘It sounds to me,’ he said, ‘as if you’ve been using this wonderful gift that’s been vouchsafed to you for frivolous and unworthy ends. You must tell me how you do that when you’ve got a moment.’

  Vetriz shrugged. ‘It wasn’t worth this headache,’ she replied. ‘Dear gods, I hope I don’t have to give a blow-by-blow account to Her. I wouldn’t know where to look.’

  ‘I expect the general outline will suffice,’ Alexius said. ‘Maybe that explains the secret midnight summons, and the urgency. She demands to know whether your intentions towards her brother are honourable.’

  Vetriz sniffed. ‘Next time,’ she said, ‘you can jolly well walk.’

  There was also a messenger who ran from the Bank down to Strangers’ Quay and the customs house, where the Deputy Chief of Excise and the duty watch were mulling a gallon of confiscated Colleon mead over the fire and toasting cheese. When the Deputy had heard what the messenger had to say, he pulled on his coat and his boots and stomped off along the quay, muttering under his breath, until he reached the Hope and Determination, a very plain and functional tavern whose idea of overnight accommodation was letting the customers sleep it off where they dropped. There he found the man he wanted, one Patras Icenego, a Perimadeian refugee and master of the Charity, a small, ugly cutter that was always tied up at the far end of the quay, fully rigged and provisioned, but never seemed to go anywhere. The curious thing about Patras Icenego was that, although he spent most of his life in the Hope and Determination, he never paid for anything and was always sober. As soon as he saw the Deputy walk in, he was on his feet. The two men talked together for a minute or so; then the Deputy went away, while Patras Icenego got up and left the tavern, walking quickly up the slope to the centre of town. He called at a variety of inns and taverns, and in a remarkably short space of time had assembled enough men, awake and sober, to crew the Charity. An hour later, the small ship was under way, its running lights fading into the sea-fret that hung around Scona like some form of protection.

  ‘I’m getting sick and tired of this bench,’ Vetriz said. ‘I’ll swear there’s grooves in it.’

  Alexius nodded. ‘I’m tired of our cosy chats with the Lady Director,’ he replied. ‘Nothing ever seems to happen, I always end up with a headache, and I can never seem to remember what we’ve been talking about. I wonder if cows feel the same way after they’ve been milked.’

  Vetriz looked at him. ‘We usually seem to be having two conversations at once; you know, one here and one over there, wherever there is. The trouble is, when we’re there it’s no earthly use trying to tell lies or pretend; they just don’t work. But we never seem to talk about anything significant. In fact, now you come to mention it, I haven’t a clue what we do talk about. I wonder if you’re right, about cows being milked.’ She shuddered. ‘Though I’d put it more in terms of flies and a spider.’

  Alexius sighed. ‘I think the worst part of it’s the humiliation. Well, it would be,’ he added, ‘for me. After all, I was supposed to know about these things; Daisy the cow, Emeritus Professor of Dairy Studies.’

  The door opened (‘Not so bad,’ Vetriz whispered. ‘Under an hour this time.’) and the usual bored-looking clerk collected them and ushered them in. There was a man standing behind the Director’s chair. He looked older and thinner than the last time Vetriz had seen him; but also taller and stronger, as if he’d grown. That was odd.

  ‘Hello,’ Gorgas said.

  Vetriz nodded in reply, then looked at Niessa. She looked awful; her face had somehow collapsed, and even her hair seemed flat and thin. Perhaps she’s ill.

  ‘No,’ Niessa said, ‘just worry. Sit down, for pity’s sake. Now listen. At Chapter today, the Foundation voted to send six thousand halberdiers to attack Scona. It’s inconceivable that we can withstand an assault on that scale – be quiet, Gorgas – and even if we could, the effort would ruin us. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

  Alexius nodded. ‘I take it you’re looking for somewhere else to fight this war,�
�� he said.

  ‘Of course. Obviously, the only sensible course of action is to change their mind.’ She paused and closed her eyes for a moment. ‘Unfortunately,’ she went on, ‘I seem to have underestimated quite how big their mind is.’

  Gorgas took a step forward and sat down on the edge of the desk. ‘What she’s saying is,’ he said, ‘we’d probably have a better chance trying to fight them.’

  ‘I thought I told you to be quiet,’ Niessa said. ‘In fact, though, what my brother’s just said isn’t so far from the truth. Trying to fend them off in the Principle is going to be much harder than I’d ever imagined. It’s possible, of course, but it’s made much harder by the fact that they know what I’m going to do. I simply hadn’t anticipated that,’ she added. ‘I thought I had the world monopoly on magic, and I was wrong. I think that’s hurt me more than the prospect of losing the Bank, knowing that I’ve made such a stupid mistake.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Alexius interrupted. ‘Are you saying that the Foundation can – excuse me, they can do magic?’

  Niessa shook her head impatiently. ‘I’m not in the mood for an academic discussion about terminology,’ she said. ‘When I heard the news from Chapter, I used the – damn it, terminology again; call it a link or a conduit, whatever you like, the thing I’ve been building between you and your friend Gannadius. I tried to go through you to him, to make him change their minds. But I couldn’t get in. You remember, you saw him sitting in front of you, but you couldn’t get his attention, or see what he was looking at?’

  Alexius stared at her and said nothing.

  ‘It amazes me that they’ve been able to keep it from me,’ Niessa went on. ‘But they’ve closed it all up. If I can’t even get in, how the hell can I expect to be able to do useful work there? And now,’ she went on, ‘as if that’s not bad enough, they’re attacking me.’ She turned her head and glared at Vetriz. ‘Attacking us, through Bardas.’

  Vetriz felt herself go suddenly cold, the way you feel sometimes when you cut yourself deeply. ‘Oh,’ was all she said. Niessa looked at her unpleasantly, and Vetriz remembered Alexius’ joke about honourable intentions.

  ‘Of course,’ she went on, ‘I’ve taken such steps as I can. Bardas will be back here in a day or so, where he belongs.’ Here she gave Gorgas a filthy look; he turned his head away. ‘And now it seems that you’ve suddenly become terribly important to us all, which I must admit surprises me a great deal; another mistake on my part which no doubt I’ll live to regret. Really,’ she added, ‘I only kept you here for tidiness’ sake. Thank the gods I’ve had the sense to keep a few peasant virtues.’

  Gorgas smiled at that. She ignored him. ‘So there we are,’ she sighed. ‘The defence of the realm depends on the three of you. Gorgas can go through the motions of trying to fend off six thousand halberdiers. Alexius – well, we’ll have to see what we can do. I have an unpleasant feeling that you’re going to be needed for defence more than anything more productive, now that they’ve got control of your wretched friend. And you,’ she went on, giving Vetriz her nastiest look yet; it made Vetriz want to giggle but fortunately she managed not to. ‘You’re going to have to look after our gods-damned liability of a brother, and I wish you the very best of luck. It’s something we’ve been trying to do these past twenty years, and you can judge for yourself what sort of a fist we’ve made of it.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ‘Sleep,’ said Gorgas Loredan, ‘is wrong. I don’t hold with it. If a tax-collector showed up on your doorstep and demanded a third of everything you own, you’d cut his throat and start a riot. But along comes sleep, demanding a third of your life, and you snuggle your face into the pillow and let him rob you. Well, maybe you do. Not me.’ He yawned, and covered his mouth with his fist. ‘When I was a kid, I made the decision not to let the bastard grind me down; I started cutting back, slowly and gradually, half an hour per year, and now I can get by easily on four hours a night, and go without sleep entirely for three or four days in a row if I have to. Net result is, by the time I’m your age I’ll have lived eight whole years longer than you have – that’s four more hours a day for forty-eight years, you can get out your counters and check the arithmetic if you don’t believe me. Think of it, eight more years of life. It’s like what market traders do with the coinage; you know, the way they clip a tiny bit of silver off the edge of each coin that passes through their hands, and after a while they’ve got a jar full of silver they can take down to the Mint and exchange for new coin.’

  The sergeant smiled. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘You Loredans cheat everybody else, so why not Death as well? Sounds only fair to me.’

  Gorgas shook his head. ‘Not all us Loredans, just me. Niessa’s got the staying power of a cheap tallow candle. About the time I’m settling down to make a start on a useful night’s work, she’s dead on her feet and sleepwalking back to her bed. Bardas was a bit better than that, but still no night-owl.’ He sighed, and put his hand over the side of the boat, letting his fingers trail in the water. ‘I’m telling you,’ he said, ‘if I were to invent some medicine you could buy in a bottle that guaranteed you an extra eight years of life, guaranteed to work, money back if not, I’d be so rich I could buy Shastel instead of fighting it. But you try and convince people to do without a few hours’ sleep, they look at you as if you were murdering their children. Crazy.’

  The sergeant grunted. ‘You’d get on well with my youngest boy,’ he said sorrowfully. ‘Four years old and he never goes to bed before his mother. If you make him to go bed, he only waits till we’re all asleep and then gets up again. I caught him trying to light the lamp the other night – well after midnight, and he nearly burnt the house down. Four years old,’ he repeated, shaking his head. ‘By your reckoning, if he keeps at it he’ll be older than me by the time he’s thirty.’

  Gorgas laughed. ‘You send him to me when he’s twelve and I’ll put him to work as my night clerk,’ he said. ‘No point in all that extra time going to waste.’

  ‘I’ll hold you to that,’ the sergeant replied.

  The narrow quay of the factory island was already busier than usual. One of the first orders Gorgas had given when the news broke was for the stockpiles of arms and materials in the factories to be shifted up to the Town and every available ship and barge was being loaded up with bales and barrels, sacks, crates, jars and boxes. ‘Not a bad start,’ Gorgas commented, as they disembarked. ‘But we’re going to need to set up another shift, maybe two, and that’ll mean we’ll need more labour, not to mention materials. Then there’s transport, and storage too, of course. Fat lot of good it’ll do us having a cellarful of barrels of arrows here if we can’t find the barges to ship them a few hundred yards over the water to the city.’

  ‘Build more barges, then,’ the sergeant said. ‘Or you could requisition some of the cattle-boats.’

  Gorgas shook his head. ‘Not likely,’ he said. ‘They’ll be too busy hauling timber and pig-iron from Colleon and the South. And as for building barges, I can’t spare the shipyard capacity. I’ve got ten commerce raiders to build and a couple of months to do it in, so the hell with building barges.’

  The sergeant raised an eyebrow. ‘Commerce raiders?’

  Gorgas nodded. ‘It’s about the only way I can think of to take the war to the enemy. That said, though, they may just find they’ve got themselves into something they can’t handle. Have you ever stopped to think what proportion of its population Shastel can feed from its own farmland? Twenty thousand people living on a rock are likely to get hungry if the grain-ships can’t get through.’

  ‘Good point,’ the sergeant said.

  Gorgas stopped to let a cart laden with oxhides pass. ‘And their timing isn’t exactly wonderful, either,’ he went on, ‘declaring war when the early barley’s just coming up to being ready to cut. Catches fire easily at this time of year; believe me, I’m a farm boy, I know these things. We aren’t through yet, my friend, not by a long way. And those bastards up there
in their castle might just learn a few things about what wars really mean that aren’t anywhere in their textbooks.’

  The first visit on the itinerary was to the sawmill. It was fortuitous, to say the least, that Gorgas had insisted that Scona have its own top-class sawmill, and had cajoled his sister into parting with the money to build it. He’d based it on the sea-mills of Perimadeia, but the Scona version was bigger and rather more efficient. The tide surging up the narrow straits between the factory island and Scona trapped water in a system of weirs, which powered five enormous water wheels, in turn connected by a fabulously complicated array of gears and drives to the flywheels that dominated the sawmill itself. Ten huge circular blades, each one as tall as a man, ran day and night in the sawpits, while another feed powered the rollers that drew the logs into the blades. Three shifts of a hundred men, women and children loaded the rollers, took off and stacked the cut planks, cleaned out the mountains of sawdust and made sure the mill kept going. There were even two orderlies on duty at all times, to patch up cuts and pull out splinters for workers who weren’t careful or quick enough around the spinning blades.

  ‘I could stand here all day just watching,’ Gorgas shouted over the deafening noise. ‘When I think of how long it used to take us when I was a kid, fooling around with hammer and wedges, it makes me realise I’ve achieved something in my life.’